The production of the TV series "Wenzhou Family", "Wenzhou Two Families" and "Wenzhou Three Families" spanned 13 years, respectively, recounting the history of the entrepreneurship struggle of the people of Wenzhou in three historical stages, including the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to China's accession to the WTO, China's accession to the WTO to the Eighteenth National Congress of the Party, and the new era since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which is actually telling a history of reform and opening up in contemporary China. The narrative perspective of the unity of home and country that it upholds not only has the traditional spirit of the long-standing Chinese nation, but also has distinct significance of the times.
As we all know, the essence of traditional Oriental civilization is the patriarchal society farming civilization, blood has become the most important link between social relations and social interaction, fellow villagers see fellow villagers, two tears, this well-known folk proverb, itself shows that pan-blood has become an important law of interpersonal interaction, "kings and subjects, fathers and sons" "gewu, zhizhi, Qi family, governance, peace in the world" has become an important criterion and value judgment of Confucian social governance.
Therefore, in this sense, to narrate the Chinese story of reform and opening up, and to see through the Wenzhou phenomenon that emerged in the birthplace of reform and opening up, "home" has become a very good or even the best artistic carrier and narrative perspective.
As director Kong Sheng said when talking about the creation of "Wenzhou Family", "This work is unique in structure, after a family of four left Ryan, it was divided into four clues, and their footprints spread all over the country, as well as Italy, France, Russia in Europe, and also involved wartime Iraq, and the four clues rarely intersected." This structure poses a huge challenge for both the difficulty of shooting and the audience ratings. However, because this structure can widely display the entrepreneurial spirit of Wenzhou people who started from scratch and worked hard since the reform and opening up, the pioneering spirit of breaking through the world and making the world home, the creative spirit of daring to innovate and being good at innovation, it was used or used by the later "two families" and "three families" to form the "Wenzhou family" trilogy.
The success of the narrative of the play lies in the fact that the choreographer strives to "make every clue look good and make the story of each clue a suspense", while focusing on strengthening the plot logic and emotional echo of the play through the blood ties of "one family", "two families" and "three families", so that the "Wenzhou Family" series naturally has a scattered artistic texture and aesthetic charm.
Of course, the greatest artistic value of the series lies in the strong modern significance of its home country narrative. The crack of the trilogy lies in the fact that in order to change the fate of himself and his family, the protagonist Zhou Wanshun resolutely sold the old rural mansion where his ancestors lived for generations, so that his daughter left her hometown and went to Italy to live, and she took her wife and children to Wenzhou to find new business opportunities for social transformation after the reform and opening up. Since then, "Wenzhou Two Families" has recounted the story of China's Wenzhou garment businessman Hou Sanshou and shoe entrepreneur Huang Ruicheng in the face of the dual pressures of the international financial crisis and domestic economic transformation. "Wenzhou Three Families" tells the story of Ye Zifan, Pan Xiaoyong, Lin Zhixia and Zeng Zhiqiu, young people in the Three Families of Ye, Pan and Lin in the era of Internet economy, who seized the intelligent highland, developed the Internet economy, and fought against the business sea. Therefore, the essence of the trilogy is to unfold the contradictory relationships and fates of the characters in such a new type of family relationship.
Obviously, whether unintentionally or intentionally, the "Wenzhou Family" series uses this "home" deconstruction and reconstruction to show the disintegration of family relations in the traditional blood patriarchal society after the social transformation and the rebirth of "home" in the modern sense, as well as the sense of tearing, destiny and vicissitudes of the family kinship relationship brought about by this huge social transformation. For example, in "Wenzhou Family", Zhou Wanshun, who is eager to change his fate, not only has difficulty winning the understanding of his wife and two children, but even reversed them from possible success to the bottom of failure with no way out, and stubbornly tried to regain control and rewrite the fate of himself and his family again and again. Therefore, the realism of the play is that the work is not simply a copy of the real-life Wenzhou story, but with a huge creative courage and artistic strength, profoundly showing the personal entrepreneurial history with the consciousness of original sin represented by Zhou Wanshun. Screenwriter Gao Mantang once pointed out, "One of the original intentions of my creation of "Wenzhou Family" is to write the story of small characters in a reasonable and reasonable way, especially the stories of fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons, with the help of a large background, with a small perspective, to complete a small character, big feelings, and a big realm of the dramatic process. The script of "Wenzhou Family" reflects the struggle of Wenzhou businessmen in the past 30 years of reform and opening up with a small and unremarkable family and four unique entrepreneurial roads. In this legendary story, some people are gamblers who are desperate to lose and fight; some people choose to be strong and dry their tears and grow up against the wind; some people experience spiritual baptism and reposition the value of life; some people want to live a plain life, but they have no intention of inserting willows to achieve their careers. "Wenzhou Family" is not only the story of Wenzhou businessmen, but also the entrepreneurial story of a generation of Chinese. "Refracting the big history with small people, and embodying the historical process and great changes of the times of the big society with the small family, it is precisely the evolution history of Chinese society and the evolution history of personal destiny that have created world miracles since the reform and opening up, and the "Wenzhou Family" trilogy has thus become the epic of the era of social progress and personal legend in this great era.
Undoubtedly, from the perspective of creation, the "Wenzhou Family" trilogy can be said to be more difficult than one. However, the production team has faced difficulties and accurately grasped the spirit of the times, showing that since the reform and opening up, Wenzhou people have taken the lead in exploring the path of socialist market economy and creating the Wenzhou model; responding to the international financial crisis, exploring industrial transformation and upgrading, and developing the Wenzhou model; taking the "Belt and Road" as the path to explore the high-quality development of the Internet era and innovate the Wenzhou model. The "Wenzhou Family" trilogy focuses on the modernization of a city in southern China with an unprecedented grand scale, and has been broadcast on CCTV, the highest platform in the country, which has had a huge impact.
At the same time, the production of the trilogy itself has also become another symbol of the production of TV dramas and the spirit of Wenzhou in our time. It is generally believed that serial production is an important manifestation of the industrialization of film and television. Some scholars have pointed out that "it requires the creation, summarization and reproduction of successful film elements within the framework of an industrial operation". As a regional theme, the series of dramas has combined excellent creative resources nationwide, of which the first drama was finally named "Wenzhou Family", which can be described as the finishing touch. In addition, this series has emerged a number of excellent actors and producers, such as the main actors Zhang Yi, Yin Tao and Jin Dong in "Wenzhou Family", who emerged in this drama and later developed into a hot A-list star, such as producer Hou Hongliang and director Kong Sheng, and later filmed blockbuster works such as "Langya List" and "The Pretender". In this sense, the creative phenomenon and industrial production experience of the "Wenzhou Family" series are worth summarizing well, and they are all valuable assets that cannot be ignored in the industrial production of Chinese film and television.
(The author is Vice Dean and Professor, College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University)
Source: Wen Wei Po